The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, South Korea last year was seen by many as a turning point for development cooperation and effectiveness. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) was the first multilateral development bank to adopt a corporate-wide results framework in 2008. At the first post-Busan ADB Annual Meeting held earlier this month, Managing Director General Rajat Nag launched ADB’s Development Effectiveness Review 2011, which applies the results framework to assess the bank’s progress toward meeting its 2020 targets on development effectiveness. ADB intends to revamp the framework in 2012 through a consultative process. The outcomes of the high level forum and the findings of the ADB report have broad implications for development effectiveness throughout the Asian continent.

On May 22, the Development Assistance and Governance Initiative at Brookings hosted a discussion on development effectiveness in Asia. ADB Managing Director General Rajat M. Nag provided brief remarks, followed by a panel discussion, including: Keiichiro Nakazawa, Chief Representative of the U.S. Office of the Japan International Cooperation Agency; Paul O’Brien, vice president for policy and campaigns of Oxfam America; and Tony Pipa, deputy assistant administrator of the Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Brookings Senior Fellow Homi Kharas, deputy director of Global Economy and Development at Brookings, moderated the discussion.

[Kim Jong Un's succession and establishing Ri Sol Ju as the mother of the next North Korean leader] In the past his father and grandfather had multiple wives and there was intense jockeying about who was the heir. He knows the regime focuses on bloodlines, and he has Kim Il Sung’s blood in his veins...[Kim Jong Un] is the third Kim. Is he going to be the one that gives up nuclear weapons and makes North Korea beholden to outside powers? I doubt it.